The present invention relates to a method of and apparatus for manufacturing filament-type tag pins in the form of such an assembly in which individual tag pins are integrally but severably connected in the direction of their thickness, and more particularly, to a method of and apparatus for manufacturing tag pin assemblies which enable to remarkably cut down the production cost of tag pins and yet manufacture such tag pin assemblies the handling of which is greatly easified.
Today publicly known are filament-type tag pins which are molded from a synthetic resin such as nylon for example to individually comprise a head and a crossbar integrally connected by a filament to an overall arrangement generally resembling letter H and which are widely utilized in for example attaching to merchandise price tags, other indication tags or the like, or in connecting a plurality of goods to one another.
As indicated above, tag pins are often used as attachment elements for price tags or the like to be anchored to merchandise, and in such use of tag pins, they are loaded in a dispensing device provided with an application needle having a C-shaped cross-section, assembly by assembly in the form of which they are manufactured and supplied and which comprises a number of tag pins integrally connected in the thickness direction thereof. The application needle is applied through a price tag or the like and then applied from this side to the far side of an object or an item of merchandise. When an operation lever of the dispensing device is then manipulated, a first tag pin of the loaded tag pin assembly is severed from a second one, and its crossbar is pushed into the needle and guided in the needle to reach the far side of the object in a condition of the crossbar flexed and lying substantially parallel to the filament of the tag pin. As soon as the crossbar is driven enough deep to come out of the needle, the latter may be pulled back out of the object and the price tag or the like, whereby the price tag or the like becomes anchored to the object, with the crossbar restoring its original perpendicular position relative to the filament.
Tag pins for use as exemplified above have drawn a wide public attention in that they can remarkably simplify the operation for example for tag attachment to merchandise which in the past was carried out with use of threads, yarns, strings or the like, and they are today utilized in large quantities in for example connecting price tags to a large number of garments and so forth. Accordingly, it is strongly required of tag pins that they can afford a high operation efficiency and can be manufactured at as low a cost as possible, and in the light of this, they are manufactured in assemblies having on the single carrier rod respectively thereof as many a number of member tag pins as possible so as thereby to reduce the number of molding shots and also to facilitate handling of tag pins.
In the conventional manufacture of tag pins, it has been indispensable for reasons to do with molding that in forming a tag pin assembly in which member pins are arranged in a great number in their thickness direction, the inter-pin pitch has a relatively great value. That is to say, whereas tag pin assemblies are formed in a mold, it is necessary to provide a partition wall between each adjacent molding cavities in the mold in order to form individually independent tag pins. Thus, it is indispensably required that the mold should provide for a space or spaces for the partition walls, and the inter-pin pitch of a molded tag pin assembly comes to be such as generally corresponding to the thickness of the head or the crossbar, which is relatively great, and the thickness of the partition wall, in combination.
Then, to set the inter-pin pitch of a tag pin aseembly as above and to form tag pins integrally connected on their common carrier rod accompany generation of the following difficulties:
(1) The number of tag pins in a single tag pin assembly is limited to 50 to 60 at best, so that in manipulating tag pins by a dispensing device, loading of a tag pin assembly should necessarily be operated in an accordingly increased frequency, whereby the operation efficiency in dispensing tag pins is affected.
(2) Whereas a number of tag pin assemblies are packed in a container for their transportation, storage and so forth, with tag pin assemblies having a relatively large inter-pin pitch, their individual pins are prone to be mutually entangled, and to disentangle tag pins once entangled requires a time consuming operation.
(3) In the tag pin assembly, the member tag pins are arranged on their common carrier rod, and when tag pins are dispensed, there becomes the carrier rod left as a waste to be simply discarded. This means a waste of the synthetic resin material, and also is reflected upon the price of tag pins.
(4) According to an increase in the molding shot number, the unit price of tag pins is raised. Seeing that the unit price in reference is so expensive as to be on the order of one-hundredth of one Yen Japanese, significant is the influence of the increase in the molding shot number on the unit price of tag pins.
Now that tag pins are put for massive consumption, each of the above enumerated difficulties means an extremely important problem, and a solution thereof has been keenly sought for.